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* I really want to know how B'Elanna discovered that she was pregnant again; did she figure it out/discern it on her own, or did she go to Doctor Sharak or The Doctor for an examination that revealed it? It doesn't seem like there was all that much time between the resolution of the Omega anomaly crisis and her telling Tom that Miral was no longer an only child

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Uhh.. why would you want to read about how B'Elanna missed a period and peed on a stick or had herself scanned?

^ That's a fair question, so here's my answer: A pregancy is a big deal for any couple, but for a couple who's been through everything that Tom and B'Elanna have, it takes on even greater significance than it otherwise would for other couples. It's a major life-changing event for these two, particularly in light of everything they've gone through, and it seems a shame that we missed out on getting to see B'Elanna's reaction.

The lack of a "B'Elanna finds out she's pregnant" scene didn't hurt the book in any way; I just think it would've been neat to see that moment because it would've given Kirsten yet another chance to demonstrate her familiarity with these characters. To each their own, though.

Question to those who follow the Voyager novels, particularly those who have just read Eternal Tide!

I've always wanted to pick up the series of books that take place after the show but when I found out they had killed off Janeway in one I was turned off from starting the series. She was my favorite character on the show and it just didn't seem right to read them without her.

So my question is this - since I heard that Janeway comes back in the Eternal Tide (honestly the cover was kind of a giveaway ), would it be absolutely necessary for me to read the previous books or can I just jump right in with Eternal Tide?

I've always wanted to pick up the series of books that take place after the show but when I found out they had killed off Janeway in one I was turned off from starting the series.

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Actually Janeway was killed off in a TNG book, Before Dishonor. The VGR novels then had to deal with the consequences of that storytelling choice.

So my question is this - since I heard that Janeway comes back in the Eternal Tide (honestly the cover was kind of a giveaway ), would it be absolutely necessary for me to read the previous books or can I just jump right in with Eternal Tide?

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If you're a Janeway fan, you should find plenty to love in the three books dealing with her death and its aftermath, Full Circle, Unworthy, and Children of the Storm. She's not ignored in them; her presence is very strong as the other characters deal with her loss and her legacy. I think she was served better in those books than she was in most of the books that she was alive for. (And she is alive for maybe half of Full Circle, which covers a substantial span of time that overlaps Before Dishonor.)

Not to mention that you can't really jump right in with The Eternal Tide, because it's the culmination of the plot threads that were established and developed over the previous three books (and Before Dishonor as well).

I've always wanted to pick up the series of books that take place after the show but when I found out they had killed off Janeway in one I was turned off from starting the series. She was my favorite character on the show and it just didn't seem right to read them without her.

So my question is this - since I heard that Janeway comes back in the Eternal Tide (honestly the cover was kind of a giveaway ), would it be absolutely necessary for me to read the previous books or can I just jump right in with Eternal Tide?

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Read from Full Circle. Full Circle is one of the best Trek books I've read in the last 30 or so years.

The handling of Janeways death in FC is a big part of how good the novel was. There really was no need to bring her back - Kirstens novels were just excellent without her. However, I'm sure Kirstens books will continue to be excellent with Janeway...

I found the journey part to be pretty good. Not up to par with the previous three Beyer novels but still good. I have an aversion to plots where the entire universe is threatened but this was handled OK. I thought the Trek tidbits from previous episodes and books were a pretty good selection and handled well, Riley, Omega, the various Q's, Kes, Janeway's time trip in series finale, Seven dying in the alternate timeline. All that was brought in seemed to make sense and held together plot wise but it just didn't blow me away like Children of the Storm did. The way Janeway came back didn't make me groan which was what I was expecting. And since Janeway's back we need to get rid of Eden so her spot is open but there's been foreshadowing for that so that's convenient.

And the destination part, where we ended up? I've said before Kirsten Beyer has done something no one else has done, make me want to read another Voyager book after having just finished a Voyager book. That's not the case here. It seems like a lot of the work in the previous novels setting up an interesting situation was undone here so we can end up in a place that's less interesting to me.

Janeway is back so obviously she needs to be in a relationship with Chakotay. My god, those scenes were death to me. How many pages of were there of Paris talking about how cute Mira is? And now they are going to have a second kid? Four more ships in the fleet were destroyed so 2/3's of the fleet have been destroyed so there's not much of a fleet left. And Icheb is back for basically no reason.

We're pretty much at the point where we were during the series only Voyager has a couple of support ships and a slip stream drive so they can go home when they want so the situation is less tense. All we need is for Tuvok to get a transfer and we're really resetting things. The book it self was fine, the weakest of the 4, but still good. I just feel let down by the fact that it seems like we're starting over again.

There was a point where DS9r was rocking and Voyager Relaunched was terrible, then things switched. DS9r fell apart and Beyer took over and Voyager was awesome. Now with the DRGIII DS9 books being awesome and Voyager seemingly devolving into J/C fan fiction, at least from my perspective, it looks like things have switched back again. It doesn't look like there's a Voyager book in 2013, unless an unexpected author is writing a Voyager Fall book, so I guess we have to wait at least a year to find out. I just feel like this book left the story in a place that I'm not all that interested in reading about.

Lame as I know this sounds, I really have been looking forward to reading this book for four months, as it has sat on my Kindle. I have a long story about moving to a new school and teaching a new grade which is interesting to no one but me, but I'm so happy I finally got to this.

And: I avoided this thread completely. I had no idea who would live or die. At various moments, I was positive Q (deLancie) would die, or Chakotay would, or Eden would, or wouldn't, or then would... or Janeway would die again... I was guessing until the end. Which was *awesome*, and earned the ending for me bigtime. My huge complaint with resurrection is that it erodes the meaning of death, but right after Janeway is brought back to life, I'm still thinking "this could be the end of Chakotay?! I just started liking him!!" Kirsten is doing her job, she's earning her stories. And her middle name remains accurate, for my money

It's hard for me to talk about the large-scale stuff on this very much, especially given how much time I spent trying to convince people that 1) Janeway's death was a great thing for this story, and 2) that she'd be back someday and everyone should just calm down about it. I still stand by both, and though I do think I would've liked one more book between this and Children with slightly lower stakes and a chance to explore Eden's character one last time, I think the last three books proved me right on 1, and this does 2 as gracefully as anyone ever could. For any other discussion of the meta-conversation going on here, I refer back to Nasat's brilliant post earlier.

For me, there are two things that keep Voyager at the top of my "must read" pile. (I swear, it really has been at the top for four months.) First are the moments of character interaction that I never see coming. She surprises me every book with scenes that get to me in unexpected ways. This time, it was Paris with Conlon, and her crisis over the loss of life. It was Conlon agreeing to date Harry, and the conversation calling him a mess, which I think you could read as a joke, but I've always thought Harry had some serious stuff buried, and I prefer to think of it as Conlon telling him she could really see right through him. It was Cambridge and the Doctor bickering. It was Janeway asking Eden if she wanted coffee, and Eden replying "tea". It was Seven's strange feeling of peace, meeting someone else with a similar experience. It was Q (deLancie) saying Janeway had made an enemy of him, almost with willful irrationality.

And second, as an author choosing her stories, as a writer creating her characters, Kirsten has every time (5 for 5 now) bravely and without a hint of doubt tackled questions about humanity and its role in a universe populated with powerful, terrifying, and beautiful things. None of these books fill space, none of them shy away from the implications, and every one feels like the greatest and most powerful story she could possibly be telling right now. As an atheist, this is basically what spirituality means to me. Kirsten's novels make me think, feel, and every once in a while, bawl like a tiny tiny baby.

I'd just like to say here that I believe yours is the first comment to note the scenes with Conlon, and that made my day. I don't have the luxury of weighing the importance of my characters moment to moment. When I am writing for each of them, whether theirs is the main focus of the larger story or not, they are the star of that moment and I give each of them all I have. But Nancy's stuff surprised me every time I got to one of her scenes. It was always one of those odd moments where the character was leading me where she needed to go rather than me having already decided exactly how this was going to work. I just sort of dove in each day and trusted her. And for me, all of her scenes, but particularly the two you mentioned, have remained a little quietly extra special for me. They seem to have been lost in the shuffle and that's not surprised given all the ground we were covering here, but that you pointed them out was pretty damn cool.

Question to those who follow the Voyager novels, particularly those who have just read Eternal Tide!

I've always wanted to pick up the series of books that take place after the show but when I found out they had killed off Janeway in one I was turned off from starting the series. She was my favorite character on the show and it just didn't seem right to read them without her.

So my question is this - since I heard that Janeway comes back in the Eternal Tide (honestly the cover was kind of a giveaway ), would it be absolutely necessary for me to read the previous books or can I just jump right in with Eternal Tide?

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Voyager wasn't about Janeway. It was about a group of characters, and different kind of stories. I will never understand why people will deny themselves good stories about interesting characters, just because one character died. And this is coming from someone who only really started liking the Voyager characters thanks to Kirsten's books.

Janeway was/is only one character (and in my opinion not a very interesting one) in a whole ensemble. Go and read the novels by Kirsten, especially the ones without Janeway, and you'll see that this crew, this group of people, are AS good as they are without her, then with.

Lame as I know this sounds, I really have been looking forward to reading this book for four months, as it has sat on my Kindle. I have a long story about moving to a new school and teaching a new grade which is interesting to no one but me, but I'm so happy I finally got to this.

And: I avoided this thread completely. I had no idea who would live or die. At various moments, I was positive Q (deLancie) would die, or Chakotay would, or Eden would, or wouldn't, or then would... or Janeway would die again... I was guessing until the end. Which was *awesome*, and earned the ending for me bigtime. My huge complaint with resurrection is that it erodes the meaning of death, but right after Janeway is brought back to life, I'm still thinking "this could be the end of Chakotay?! I just started liking him!!" Kirsten is doing her job, she's earning her stories. And her middle name remains accurate, for my money

It's hard for me to talk about the large-scale stuff on this very much, especially given how much time I spent trying to convince people that 1) Janeway's death was a great thing for this story, and 2) that she'd be back someday and everyone should just calm down about it. I still stand by both, and though I do think I would've liked one more book between this and Children with slightly lower stakes and a chance to explore Eden's character one last time, I think the last three books proved me right on 1, and this does 2 as gracefully as anyone ever could. For any other discussion of the meta-conversation going on here, I refer back to Nasat's brilliant post earlier.

For me, there are two things that keep Voyager at the top of my "must read" pile. (I swear, it really has been at the top for four months.) First are the moments of character interaction that I never see coming. She surprises me every book with scenes that get to me in unexpected ways. This time, it was Paris with Conlon, and her crisis over the loss of life. It was Conlon agreeing to date Harry, and the conversation calling him a mess, which I think you could read as a joke, but I've always thought Harry had some serious stuff buried, and I prefer to think of it as Conlon telling him she could really see right through him. It was Cambridge and the Doctor bickering. It was Janeway asking Eden if she wanted coffee, and Eden replying "tea". It was Seven's strange feeling of peace, meeting someone else with a similar experience. It was Q (deLancie) saying Janeway had made an enemy of him, almost with willful irrationality.

And second, as an author choosing her stories, as a writer creating her characters, Kirsten has every time (5 for 5 now) bravely and without a hint of doubt tackled questions about humanity and its role in a universe populated with powerful, terrifying, and beautiful things. None of these books fill space, none of them shy away from the implications, and every one feels like the greatest and most powerful story she could possibly be telling right now. As an atheist, this is basically what spirituality means to me. Kirsten's novels make me think, feel, and every once in a while, bawl like a tiny tiny baby.

Voyager wasn't about Janeway. It was about a group of characters, and different kind of stories. I will never understand why people will deny themselves good stories about interesting characters, just because one character died. And this is coming from someone who only really started liking the Voyager characters thanks to Kirsten's books.

Janeway was/is only one character (and in my opinion not a very interesting one) in a whole ensemble. Go and read the novels by Kirsten, especially the ones without Janeway, and you'll see that this crew, this group of people, are AS good as they are without her, then with.

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Everyone enjoys a show in different ways and for different reasons. Please don't assume I enjoy things the same way you do and that everyone else should too.

One of the Treks I grew up on was Voyager and Janeway was a huge part of it because seeing a woman in a role like that as a girl made a great impression on me. So excuse me if Janeway is a huge part of Voyager for me and factors into my choices for enjoying fandom outside the show itself.

Annnnnyhow, thanks to everyone who replied. I'll probably go ahead and give starting with Full Circle a try first.

...Janeway was/is only one character (and in my opinion not a very interesting one) in a whole ensemble. Go and read the novels by Kirsten, especially the ones without Janeway, and you'll see that this crew, this group of people, are AS good as they are without her, then with.

Click to expand...

Everyone enjoys a show in different ways and for different reasons. Please don't assume I enjoy things the same way you do and that everyone else should too.

One of the Treks I grew up on was Voyager and Janeway was a huge part of it because seeing a woman in a role like that as a girl made a great impression on me. So excuse me if Janeway is a huge part of Voyager for me and factors into my choices for enjoying fandom outside the show itself....

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But there's a middle ground. I like Janeway, I think that for the most part she was a great female role model, but she was still just the lead character in an ensemble, not a solo heroine. No matter how important she was, she still wasn't the only worthwhile character or element to the series.

Back in the days when there was only TOS, Spock was by far the most popular character, the one who overshadowed all the others in the eyes of the public and many of the fans. But Spock died in TWOK, and the DC comics that followed had to carry on without him; even after he was resurrected, DC had to keep him marginalized for the most part because they didn't know where the studio would take him in the next film. So for several years, the TOS comics proceeded without Spock. Yet they still told worthwhile and engaging stories and found a way to adjust to the change. It helped that Spock's legacy (in the person of Saavik, and in the ways his friends and colleagues had been influenced and affected by their interactions with him) was still a strong part of the stories, even without him being physically present in them.

Voyager wasn't about Janeway. It was about a group of characters, and different kind of stories. I will never understand why people will deny themselves good stories about interesting characters, just because one character died. And this is coming from someone who only really started liking the Voyager characters thanks to Kirsten's books.

Janeway was/is only one character (and in my opinion not a very interesting one) in a whole ensemble. Go and read the novels by Kirsten, especially the ones without Janeway, and you'll see that this crew, this group of people, are AS good as they are without her, then with.

Click to expand...

Everyone enjoys a show in different ways and for different reasons. Please don't assume I enjoy things the same way you do and that everyone else should too.

One of the Treks I grew up on was Voyager and Janeway was a huge part of it because seeing a woman in a role like that as a girl made a great impression on me. So excuse me if Janeway is a huge part of Voyager for me and factors into my choices for enjoying fandom outside the show itself.

Annnnnyhow, thanks to everyone who replied. I'll probably go ahead and give starting with Full Circle a try first.

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You should certainly enjoy it your own way, I won't say you shouldn't. I just feel that saying you love Voyager but then don't read certain novels because one character out of several is missing, makes no sense. You are robbing yourself of a great reading experience that way. I actually rewatched Voyager after reading the Beyer-novels, and enjoyed the show so much more, since Beyer made the character far more believable to me then the show itself ever did.

You enjoy whatever way you want, definatly. But don't deny yourself something because of one missing character.

got this for christmas and i have tosay, despite my previous stance that i hated the idea of Janeway being brought back, this book handled it very well and i really enjoyed the whole novel. despite my previous vow to stop reading all the novels if she was brought back, i am going to continue reading them - especially VGR - just to see where it goes next.

i should've known KMFB would knock it out of the park and make it awesome.